


The Madness of the Year

by orchid314



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Case Fic, Drug Use, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Suicide Attempt, War Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-08-23 01:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchid314/pseuds/orchid314
Summary: Everyone has their secrets.





	The Madness of the Year

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sans_patronymic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_patronymic/gifts).



> This story riffs off of sans_patronymic's beautiful [Stranger from the West](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8420086), taking it in a somewhat different direction. 
> 
> [ancient reader](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientreader) made this fic better than it had any right to be through her generous and astute beta-reading. Thank you, thank you.
> 
> Many thanks also to the Holmestice moderators for their infinite patience with my struggle to meet deadlines.

Of late Sherlock Holmes had taken to categorising the sounds from the room upstairs. The barked orders. The one-sided conversations. The haunted moans. One evening they did not subside and Holmes was finally obliged to drop several pieces of scientific equipment on the floor to interrupt the terrible noise. Mrs Hudson had grumbled throughout the course of the next day as she dislodged the resulting shards of glass from the corners of Holmes's workroom, which adjoined the sitting room at Baker Street. 

Then there were the nights in which there were no moans, but only a restless pacing across the floorboards. Holmes would count the steps in these midnight ghost marches. It helped to pass the interminable hours after an experiment failed or when his mood collapsed without warning.

Tonight: Shouts and then silence. Watson scrambling from his bed, slipping before he regained his footing. To the washbasin to splash water on his face. A pause. Tap thump, tap thump. So he had decided to employ his cane after all. The ceiling above Holmes's workroom squeaked and shifted with each turn. 

A bang and a skid and thud. The cane thrown across the room, landing at the foot of Watson's wardrobe. Ah. Holmes rose from his armchair and walked to the worktable, where he set to brewing one of the makeshift teas he resorted to when Mrs Hudson couldn't be disturbed. He discovered a plate of biscuits under a scattering of papers and carried it into the sitting room, where he placed it on the desk before fetching his latest scrapbook. He was compiling it for an inconsequential case, one he had investigated on his own immediately following the Hope affair. There had been a deranged man, a failed novelist in Shoreditch, piling up corpses in the kitchen and manuscripts in the broom cupboard. He wasn't sure why he had only told Watson about it after the fact. It had seemed simpler to pursue it alone. 

Holmes set the two cups of tea on the desk and sat down, hearing the door open above. Candlelight wavered on the landing. Tap thump, tap thump once again, this time down the stairs. He composed his face into a bland expression, immersing himself in his task.

Watson halted in the doorway, the candle throwing up large, warning shadows across the walls, but Holmes was determined to not acknowledge him. "May I join you?"

Holmes looked up. "Oh, are you there?" He took in Watson's dressing gown, his bare ankles and leather slippers. He could not help noticing how the bones in Watson's feet stood out in relief against the sunken, too-pale skin.

Watson settled himself with difficulty in the chair across from Holmes and deposited his candlestick on the desk next to Holmes's own. The two candles, the only sources of illumination in the room, flickered uncertainly as a draught slipped in from the window nearby. 

"Help yourself to a cup of tea."

"Tea? Who made it? Did you?"

"I have my ways."

Watson cast him a doubtful glance but accepted the proffered cup, and they fell into a polite silence. 

" _It is a comfort to the wretched to have a companion in misery_ ," Holmes intoned, closing his eyes for greater effect as he pronounced the words. He opened them to see Watson regarding him with a wary expression. "No, no," Holmes laughed. "Did you think I was referring to you? I meant my own wretched self, of course. Didn't you know that? Here. I shall I show you what I'm working on. I don't think you've seen one of these yet."

"And what is it?" Watson's shoulders eased lower.

"A scrapbook. In it I gather all the material I've accumulated about a case in the course of solving it. I store the most essential information in my brain-attic, but these volumes are a complement to that. Occasionally I'll pull one down from its shelf and study it, reconstructing the case step by step. The process can be rather useful when I've reached an impasse on another problem. It calms the mind and gives perspective."

"Fascinating," said Watson. "A bit like a story, then." 

"How so?"

"You know, when you have a favourite tale, one from which you can quote whole passages. You re-read it to meet up with familiar friends again or for solace or, I don't know. To calm the mind, as you said."

"I'm not sure it's the same."

"You'll probably think it foolish. But I was rather hoping to lay out the case of Jefferson Hope just as you're doing with your scrapbook there, although with words rather than clippings. As a story, if you will."

"Whatever for?"

"Doesn't it bother you that Lestrade and the Press didn't credit you with solving the Hope investigation?"

"Of course not."

"But why not?"

"The murder occurred, the facts presented themselves, I reviewed them, and the solution became clear as a result. My receiving credit or not for the case had not one whit of bearing on the outcome."

"I should have already learned that there's no use in arguing a point with you when your mind's made up."

A cunning grin crept across Holmes's face. "To the contrary. My mind is a very flexible instrument. And you haven't drunk your tea." Watson sipped from his cup, making a mock grimace. Holmes laughed appreciatively, then caught himself. What was this man doing here, speaking in such an easy interchange with him? No one sought out Sherlock Holmes for conversation. For that matter, how had Holmes ended up sharing living quarters with him for this long? There was always a larger purpose. What was Watson's? Deep hollows under the eyes. Hollows at the clavicle, too. Dressing gown of simple navy blue wool, without braid or other trim. The gun wound hiding out of sight beyond the opening of the nightshirt's placket. There had been safety in observation until now. He felt an irrational need to chide his companion.

"Is something wrong?" Watson asked. 

"Well, you had never been on a case before. It was inevitable that you would leap to conclusions."

"Oh?"

"You were too eager for the evidence to fall into certain patterns rather than considering it dispassionately, and letting the facts guide you." 

"Was I?"

"Yes, it's difficult to solve a problem if you can't summon up the proper detachment. You limit the number of possible solutions open to you." 

"I imagine it's hopeless, then? You'd rather I didn't accompany you on future cases."

"No, no. It's not that. It's rather that I made a bargain with myself long ago and I've kept it."

"What bargain is that?"

"That sentiment should not interfere with the life of the mind. That I should concentrate fully on the intellect and what it alone can apprehend."

"And has it been worth your while?"

"Worth my while? Why, what a question. All of us make bargains in life. I'll wager you have as well."

Watson reflected. "Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I did make one. In Afghanistan. But as to its exact nature— There were too many hours to think on such things while I was in hospital." 

Holmes's candle sputtered. He had stumbled into strange territory. "While in hospital. Yes. I mean. Well— " He furrowed his brow, fixing his eyes on the pages of the scrapbook. "This fellow stacked his cadavers very inefficiently. He would have done better to have stood them on end instead of laying them down flat, as he did. He had only a tiny kitchen in which to store them, after all."

Watson snorted.

"What is it?"

"It's just that I can't recall ever having had a conversation quite like the ones I do with you."

Holmes shouldn't have been so pleased with such an inconsequential remark.

"I say, Holmes. May I fetch something for you to look at?" Watson struggled to stand. When Holmes made to raise himself from his own chair, he was rewarded with a distinct glare from his fellow-lodger. At length Watson returned with a worn cloth satchel, which he dropped on the desk. 

"You'll promise not to think it ridiculous—" He removed a sheaf of papers. 

"The Hope case?" Holmes said, sceptical.

Watson was sheepish. "Yes. These are just my initial jottings. Would you help me to think them through?"

Holmes lit a cigarette and sat back in his chair, pretending that he had not relented a little. "I suppose so. What do you have?" 

Watson began to read from his notes, peering down, as he went, to decipher a word in his doctor's hand or to compulsively revise a sentence. Holmes offered commentary and corrected a fact here or there, and how he came from finding the very idea of a study of his investigative methods to be anathema, to encouraging some unexpected observation or felicitous phrase of Watson's, he could not say.

The arrival of dawn found the two men still in the sitting room at Baker Street, Watson with his elbows on the desk, his hair wild and disarranged, his eyes bleary, but with a dogged attention to Holmes's remarks while Holmes himself gleamed with entirely too much satisfaction, like a devil who had forgotten to flee the first light of day. 

\--

"Inspector Lestrade."

"Good afternoon, Dr Watson. This just came for you." Lestrade, entering the room, handed a crumpled waybill to Watson, who went to see what was afoot. The inspector then turned to the source of the odour of shag tobacco that pervaded the room. Holmes was observing with rapt attention the smoke that issued from his pipe as it made its way towards the ceiling.

"How are you, Mr Holmes? Dare I ask if you have time for a new case?"

"Hmm. What's that?" The columns of smoke spiraled upwards in a quite extraordinary way, curling and intertwining in a fanciful helix.

"I said, might I trouble you about a case?"

Watson re-entered the room, flustered. 

"What is it?" Holmes asked.

"Well, you see—" began Lestrade.

"Some trunks of mine have come from Portsmouth. I had given them up completely for lost," Watson replied. As he spoke, two deliverymen muscled the trunks into the room and set them down.

"Oh, Inspector. What are you doing here? Is it about a case? Why didn't you mention it as soon as you arrived?"

"Well, I was trying to— Oh, never mind. Yes, it's about a case," Lestrade grumbled. "A murder, no less."

"Well, let's have it. Are you going to give us the details or stand there drawing out your news?" Holmes demanded.

Lestrade gave a long-suffering sigh and began to recite the details. "Mr Maxwell Thompson, a tea importer by trade, was found dead last week on the coast of Dorset near Poole."

"What was he doing there in late September?"

"He had a summer home in the area. The local authorities say that Thompson and his wife liked to get away from the noise of London even after the season was over."

"Were they entertaining guests?"

"Only the daughter of Mr Thompson's business partner, Mr John St Martin."

"And the method of murder?"

"A kitchen knife that was encountered partially buried in the sand. It seems that it was tossed into the sea and later washed onto the shore."

"Obviously the work of an amateur." Holmes glanced at Watson, who was engrossed in reading a letter which he appeared to have found in one of the chests. Holmes glimpsed several heavy volumes (probably medical texts), a metal vessel of some kind, and one or two rolled canvases nestled among the packing materials. 

"I assume that the widow has been interviewed already?"

"Yes, by the police at Poole directly after the body was located." Lestrade shook his head. "They didn't make much headway. She was quite distressed, as you can imagine. The inspector with jurisdiction over the investigation asks if you might be able to pay her a visit. Mrs Thompson has returned to London. Would you be willing to speak with her? I know your time is valuable."

Holmes brushed aside such a minor consideration. Why wasn't Watson paying proper attention? He had asked for a case, and now here was a splendid one being served up to them. 

"The daughter of the business partner, St Martin. And St Martin himself. What do you know of them?"

"No one has spoken to them yet. Would you consider ... ?"

"Yes, yes." Holmes waved his hand. "Send me any other details that arise. I'll have a chat with the widow first." Lestrade arose, pleased to be able to send word that Holmes was to become involved in the inquiry.

After the Inspector left, Holmes crossed the room to where Watson sat on the sofa amid his newfound belongings. "Quite a haul you acquired out East," he said, wondering what had become of the letter. "Where do you intend to put everything?" But Watson looked up with what could almost be described as a tormented expression, more diminished than Holmes had seen him since the first days of their acquaintance. 

"Oh, it's nothing but rubbish, all of it. Why would I want these dusty things sitting about? I've a mind to have them taken away this very evening." With that, Watson stalked, if a convalescent man with a leg injury could be said to stalk, out of the room, down the stairs, and into Baker Street, grasping his cane as he went.

The afternoon, which had offered such delicious prospects only a few minutes before, had somehow turned cold and irritable. Well, everyone had their secrets, Holmes supposed. 

\--

"I'm not sure that I can be of much help to you." Mrs Thompson sat squatly on her chair, while a cat swished at the hem of her voluminous black skirts. The air was close and stale with the smell of cold bacon.

"If you'll be so good as to answer the questions, Mrs Thompson, we'll depart at the earliest instant. Now, for how long had your husband and John St Martin been partners?" Holmes asked. Beside him, Watson smoothed the open page of his notebook, attempting to conceal his aching leg with its pages.

"For more than twenty years," the widow said. "The St Martins were some of the first tea planters in Nepal. My husband got his start with John St Martin's father. The elder Mr St Martin was a strict taskmaster. He had to be, in such harsh conditions. Mrs St Martin was the loveliest soul but always in poor health. John did everything for her, visiting her whenever he could at the sanatorium in Darjeeling. When the elder St Martin died, the business passed to him. He was still so young at the time. It was Max who taught him everything he knew." Mrs Thompson's face hardened. "John's mother died a few years later. He changed after that. Max and I were newly married then and beginning to raise our family and didn't have much time for him. In retrospect, perhaps he felt shut out. Through the years, I made my opinions on John St Martin clear to my husband, but he never wanted to disavow his unscrupulous partner and strike out on his own." 

"Would John St Martin have wanted to harm your husband?"

"There was certainly no love lost between them. The relationship between them had been deteriorating for some time. It was a simmering sort of resentment that John held towards Max." Mrs Thompson remained resolute, but her mouth faltered. "Anyway, John was in Nepal when it happened." 

"Would Mr St Martin have been likely to conspire with a party here in England to do away with Mr Thompson while he himself was out of the country?"

"I don't know," she said in resignation. "I've kept my distance from him in recent years except where his children were concerned."

"I'm told that the only person staying with you besides the servants was in fact Mr St Martin's daughter."

"Yes, that is true." 

"Inspector Belton said that he was not allowed to interview Miss St Martin the morning when he spoke with you in Dorset. Why was that?"

"Was he not able to talk with her? I thought he had."

"Come, Mrs Thompson. You must have known that he was unable to visit with her that day. Was it a custom of hers to spend time with you at your country home?"

Mrs Thompson's face took on a mulish aspect. "Emmeline was in a fragile state and I believed she would benefit from the sea air." 

"Can you explain 'fragile'? Mrs Thompson, you'll have to be more forthcoming if we're to make any progress here." 

"I knew I shouldn't have agreed to this conversation!"

"If you'll just answer the question, madam," Holmes insisted.

"If you must know, Emmeline St Martin is a troubled girl. Her health has been delicate, so I urged her to join me in Dorset. There was no one else to care for her properly. There never has been. Now will you go?"

The cat looked up at Holmes narrowed eyes. 

As he and Watson withdrew, Holmes rubbed his hands together with glee. "I'm not sure exactly what the good widow is hiding, but I shall find out."

"Do you think you'll be able to secure another interview with her after that?" asked Watson.

"Of course I shall. Why ever not?" 

\--

How far the morphia had dragged him below the surface. He should measure the bars of his beating heart to ensure it had not stopped altogether. Was it his latest dosage that had left him thus or his old desire to slip away? Slip, slip the confines of this mortal form and vanish into air, into thin air. Anywhere but here in Baker Street. Only here in Baker Street. Why only here? The pair of dark blue eyes that followed him. Followed him? He scoffed at himself. No, they most certainly didn't follow him, but when they turned their attention to him, Holmes remembered a lithograph that had absorbed him at university, the stars of the Southern Hemisphere falling across a night-blue ground.

A night-blue sky of stars. Staring up at the heavens, Victor Trevor by his side. That evening his thoughts had expanded and leapt their customary boundaries, like a colt that had submitted too long to its new harness and was at last free. Only the vault of the sky above could match the echoing vault of his mind that night.

Until he had felt Trevor's body next to him, closer than expected. Closer than he had felt any man's body. His breath stopped. He could hear the effort it cost Trevor to contain his own respiration, and wondered at it. Trevor closed the gap between them. It was a suffocating sensation, linen jacket rucked up awkwardly under Trevor's back, linen trouser legs crushing blades of grass heavy with dew, secret and concealed in the darkness. Frogs sang in the river below. Startled, Holmes turned to face his friend and his cheek brushed inadvertently against the other's lips. He scrambled, ungainly, propelling himself upwards, as if pulled by a string, striding, running towards the house in the distance, its banks of windows ablaze. Trevor made no attempt to follow Holmes. The next morning he did not come down for breakfast and Holmes left on the noon train to London, the wind ruffling his dark curls.

He exchanged one set of letters with Trevor after his friend settled in Nepal. The morphia allowed him to envisage every tea field, every mountain peak with a rush of silly gratitude. He might write to Trevor now. To learn what he could. About this fellow, Thompson, and the other one, St Martin.

Someone was asking him a question, standing above him where he lay in the depths of the old sofa. The voice pulled him up, confusing, confused. Curtains were pulled back. Confound the hand that opened them and the unbearable light that they admitted. The voice, disillusionment in it. Well, one mustn't expect anything of Sherlock Holmes, he said defiantly (to himself?). Night skies, night skies, galaxies and constellations to be charted, he thought before he drifted off again.

\--

Round grey eyes emerged from the shadows. A young woman stood in the doorway, staring at them. She continued to examine the two visitors for a few moments, then abruptly motioned for them to follow her.

She led them into a parlour, her flowing gown trailing behind her. Then she turned to Holmes and Watson, lifting her chin. "I don't suffer from melancholy," she said. Holmes paused, unsure how to respond to such a pronouncement. 

The young woman looked between the two of them, assessing. "I won't harm you, you know."

"Of course not," Watson answered automatically.

"I'm not mad," she insisted.

"No, of course not," Watson said again. 

Holmes noted the calm umber tones of his colleague's voice. 

"I'm Emmeline," said the woman. She gave her hand to Watson, offering the tips of her fingers. Then she turned to Holmes, her head lowered, and extended her hand—reluctantly, Holmes thought. 

"Won't you sit down?"

"Miss St Martin? I'm Dr Watson and this is my colleague, Mr Sherlock Holmes. We have an appointment to see your father. Is he in?" 

Miss St Martin sat down, apparently without having heard Watson's words. Holmes only then noticed the vestiges of a scrape on one cheek, healing now. "What do you believe is the best cure for melancholy?" she asked Watson earnestly. 

He was nonplussed. "I'm by no means an expert in the matter. I don't believe there is one definitive cure, but several treatments that one should employ. Fresh air is important. Gentle exercise. Having an agreeable mental occupation." His voice ran like a straight line through the queer conversation.

Miss St Martin picked up a kind of straw circlet that sat on the side table next to her. She began to finger its adornments, which were woven in the shapes of small acorns and leaves. "I threw myself from a second-storey window. I've returned home now."

"Oh, I'm very sorry."

"Yes, a second-storey window," she repeated. "They say it is so peaceful and beautiful in Hampstead, but it's awful. Desolate. No one talks to you here."

"I suppose it's a facile thing to say," Watson began. "Yes, a facile thing. But life. Your life. It's valuable. I hope you recognise that."

She appeared to waver between scepticism and a need to believe him. "Do you think there's a chance for me? He told me there was no hope. I tried not to believe him. But he was always there, repeating the words. It was impossible to flee," the young woman said as she placed the circlet lightly on her head.

"Emmeline!" A man, almost certainly Miss St Martin's brother by the looks of him, stood at the door. How long had he been there? "Mr Holmes. I'm Ronnie St Martin."

"How do you do? My colleague, Dr Watson."

Ronnie St Martin hurried down a hall that overlooked the orderly green expanse of Gainsborough Gardens. Tall, slight, he seemed like a person who was permanently askew despite his best efforts to impose order. He was rattling on to Watson about something to do with the weather.

They turned a corner and found themselves in a large study. A man sat at a desk signing papers, the scratching of his pen loud in the silence. He did not appear to notice their arrival. Ronnie made an apologetic face, and Holmes suspected it might be a habit with him.

John St Martin looked up in mock surprise. "Have I visitors?" Ronnie ducked his head and introduced the men, discreetly retrieving the signed papers from his father's desk. 

"I'm John St Martin," he announced, without standing to shake hands. He was in his early fifties, possessed of fair hair and good looks, a faint smile of amusement on his lips. He had an air of great vitality about him, as if he could have hunted a lion before breakfast. He turned his particular attention now on Holmes. 

"Mr Holmes. —Ronnie, stop hovering." Ronnie dropped into a chair at his father's side. Rather a silly person, Ronnie St Martin, and obviously browbeaten by the force of nature that was his father. 

John St Martin turned to Watson. "And who have you brought with you, Mr Holmes?"

"My colleague Dr John Watson, recently returned from Afghanistan."

"Ah, a war hero! How intriguing. Can I offer you a brandy? You look like a man who knows his brandy."

"Mr St Martin," Holmes interrupted. "I believe you have been told why we are here."

"I know that part of the world. Been there many times. Not Afghanistan. India. I was there during the Mutiny, in fact, but I wasn't allowed to enlist in the Army. They said I was too valuable in Nepal." 

Ronnie St Martin gave a discomfited laugh. 

"So what do you have for me, Mr Holmes?"

"Please allow me to dispense with the niceties. You worked with the late Mr Thompson for many years. Can you tell me about the business you conducted together?"

"A rather dull question, to be sure. I was expecting to be queried about murder weapons and timetables and fingerprints."

"Should I ask you about those things?"

"You tell me, Mr Holmes. You're the expert, aren't you?" Holmes found that smile infuriating. 

"How would you describe your relationship with Maxwell Thompson?"

"Ah, Thompson. It flattened me, when I stepped off the train in London and learned the news. I was shocked, too, to learn of the ill-conceived transactions that he had been conducting independently. Unbeknownst to me, that is."

"You never reviewed your accounting books?"

"No, that was Thompson's purview."

"You were in Nepal when the murder occurred. For how long were you there?"

"Three months. I never stay less time than that."

"You had no way of receiving communications there, whether from the authorities or your employees in your London office?"

"The Terai is a remote region, Mr Holmes. And letters and telegrams arrive inconsistently, if at all."

"Yes, I know of the place. I have a friend there."

"Who?" John St Martin asked, a sharpness in his voice.

"Victor Trevor. A classmate of mine at university. Have you never met him? He left for the region shortly after taking his degree at Oxford several years ago. I would have thought the tea planters of the Terai would be a close-knit family."

"Oh, Trevor? Of course I've met him. I know him rather well, in fact. But I was taken up on this journey with some troubles on my properties and didn't have time for social calls."

"Understandable."

"Mr Holmes," St Martin cocked his head. "Are you trying to cast doubt on my whereabouts at the time of Mr Thompson's death? Ronnie, after we've finished here, will you show the detective the letters I sent Mr Thompson during this last journey of mine?"

"Who do you think killed Maxwell Thompson, then?"

He shrugged as if with regret. "Well, I don't like to speak ill of the dead."

"No, I wouldn't imagine so."

"But Thompson—he let himself get caught up with some rather debauched characters. You wouldn't have believed it, to look at him."

"Debauched characters? What do you mean?"

"Thompson, very unfortunately, had a predilection for—. Well, it's entirely too shocking to name. For the company of certain young men, if you must know." Watson shifted in his seat. "As I said, appearances can be deceiving, Mr Holmes. But I'm sure you know about that. In your line of work."

"You're suggesting that he was the object of blackmail?"

"I'm not suggesting anything. I'm still mourning the passing of a dear colleague and friend. Now, if you don't mind, I must depart for another engagement. Do you have any other questions for me, Mr Holmes?"

"No, thank you. We'll take our leave. There's no need to show us the way out."

"Very good, Mr. Holmes!" The bright smile was already weighing up its victory. 

\--

"An odd thing happened this morning. While you were out, I received a note from Ronnie St Martin, asking me to come to Hampstead." Watson entered the sitting room balancing a cup of tea in one hand and a tiny plate of cakes in another. Mrs Hudson was always acceding to the Doctor's entreaties.

"And what was the purpose of his request?"

"He had cut his hand—a nasty gash that he said he had got while trying to open a tin of olives. It was tied up all a-skelter with a cloth." Watson frowned. "It seemed straightforward enough at first." 

"But there was something more that you can't quite identify."

"Yes! How did you know?"

"You have a habit of rubbing your moustache between your left thumb and forefinger when you're working out a problem."

"Do I?" Watson removed his hand from his moustache and placed it on the arm of his chair. "No one else was at home," he went on. "I had my medical bag with me, so I proceeded to dress the injury. St Martin, the poor fellow, was absolutely done in. Haggard, with dark circles under his eyes. I made conversation, but each time he would trail off, as if he couldn't fix on a subject for more than a few minutes. 

"Finally he declared, 'You mustn't mind what Emmeline said the other day. She's terribly upset that she blurted out such unconsidered words to you and Mr Holmes. She couldn't stop worrying about it, so I told her that I would give you her apology when next I had the chance.' 

"'Oh, well, that's all right. We all have our good days and our less good ones.' 

"But her persisted in his theme, set on clearing his sister's name. 'My sister is well-meaning, but she often gets carried away by her own fancies. She's been that way ever since she was a child,' he told me, eager for me to believe him. 

"'Yes, of course.' 

“He had to work to keep both hands from trembling as I applied the sutures, and it occurred to me that he might be recovering from a bout of drinking. ‘Dr Watson, you fought in Afghanistan.'

"'That's right.'

"'Did you ever visit the Buddhas of Bamiyan?' he asked, his face momentarily alight. 'I remember as a child imagining the great figures come to life and stepping out of their giant alcoves.'

"'No, I never did see them, although I did encounter many equally strange things, if not stranger.' 

“St Martin hesitated. He was facing the kitchen window, cast half in light, half in shadow. ‘You treated men in combat. Did they ever— Did you ever see them afraid? One reads about it, that's all. Wars and battles. And so when one meets a person who was wounded— Please forgive me, I couldn't help noticing—'

"'No need to apologise. It's natural that one would be curious. They don't show it, by the way. The fear.' With some difficulty I gathered my thoughts. 'But after a while, you learn to know which of the men carry it inside them and which don't. It's difficult to explain, really. But it cleaves the person in half, whether officer or man. Like a bright red slicing in two. You can almost smell it.'

"St Martin stared at me with solemn eyes like his sister's. 'So there's no hiding it, then?'

"'I attempted to turn his mind from the morbid topic of our conversation. 'Fantastical ideas can accost you out there, when you're far away and missing the familiar customs of home, or tired from a long day's march. You must never think too much on any of it. —And how does that feel, now? It's best if it's bound tight like so. If it gives you any more trouble, you can always stop by Baker Street.' 

“He agreed and I was soon out of the house, and glad of it, too. A storm was coming on, the trees were thrashing about, and I walked down the hill towards the high street, never wanting to look back.”

"Well." Holmes cleared his throat.

"Yes?" 

"Nothing. Nothing at all. What do you say to a journey to Poole tomorrow?"

\--

The sky huddled close over the horizon, heavy with more rain. All was grey, above and below. The biting cold of winter muffled the sound of the sound of the surf where Holmes stood. He settled his cap lower on his head.

Too many signs pointed to Emmeline St Martin as the murderer. The widow's evasiveness concerning her houseguest. Ronnie St Martin taking so much trouble to explain his sister to Watson. Miss St Martin's presence at the scene of the crime itself. Sherlock Holmes did not especially care for evidence spelled out in emphatic bold type.

Could such a slip of a girl have killed a person? Physically wielded the heavy kitchen knife that Holmes had inspected that morning? Maxwell Thompson had not been a large man, but he would certainly have been more powerful than the sheltered Miss St Martin, who looked as if she could be carried off like a dandelion clock on a summer breeze. Had Miss St Martin feigned her distress that day at Gainsborough Gardens? What to make of the marks on her face? Holmes recalled how readily she had opened her thoughts to Watson. A doctor's bedside manner and all that. Had Watson uncovered a deeper vein of truth, or was the young woman's candour part of some elaborate ruse? 

Holmes turned his gaze from the rough waves to the shore. His eyes landed on Watson, who was further up the beach, his back to Holmes, denting the sand with the toe of his boot, inspecting an object.

And John St Martin? An egotist with a nasty edge to him. But being patently unlikeable didn’t necessarily make one a murderer. He had the securest of alibis (Trevor had confirmed by return telegram that St Martin had indeed been in Nepal at the time of Thompson's demise). Could St Martin have hired an assassin to carry out his plan? For that matter, could Mrs Thompson have been in league with him to dispense with her inconvenient husband, or could she have committed the crime herself? He would ask Watson to see if he could get anything else out of Ronnie St Martin that might clarify the murky picture. Ronnie St Martin, too, had confided in Watson.

The line of his colleague's shoulders in his mackintosh against the grey sky. He was beginning to fill out his garments and he no longer carried his cane. As if following the arc of Holmes's thoughts, Watson turned to him. Yes, with the Hope case and now this one, the doctor was doing more than merely tagging along. He would never be Holmes's equal, certainly, but Holmes had to admit that Watson noticed things that exceeded his own powers of observation.

Watson was directing words to him, but the wind shredded them and flung them into the salt air. Holmes bent into the cold, striding to catch up with the man who paced ahead of him. 

\--

Murmurs in the entryway, heralding a client. Footsteps stumbling on the stairs. A halt at the first landing. Reluctance. Deciding how to frame his appeal for help. Whether he should present an appeal at all.

Sherlock Holmes stood at his worktable, arranging beakers and flasks. Watson sat in his armchair reading before the fire.

"Dr Watson." Ah, Ronnie St Martin. "I ... I didn't know if I should find you here this late in the afternoon. Forgive me ..." Voice slurred from an (entire?) afternoon spent drinking at his club. "I ... I thought I might stop by. It's about Mr Thompson ..."

"Come in." Watson stole a glance at Holmes in his work area. Holmes nodded to him, motioning him to receive the visitor while he slipped into the shadows against the wall. "Dark and chilly on this December afternoon. I'm afraid Mr Holmes is out. Shall I take a look at your hand?"

The young man landed off balance in Holmes's armchair. Holmes could see the dusty rumpledness of him. Fear swam in eyes that were glassy with wine. And hatred, too? For the first time he began to feel curious about silly Ronnie St Martin. 

"No, no, Doctor ... Why, yes! Could you examine me? Examine me and tell me what you see?"

Watson veered out of view while he fetched his medical bag, and then returned. "The sutures aren't ready to be removed yet. Not for a week at least. But they shouldn't give you any more trouble."

"No ... no more trouble ..." St Martin said. He cast anxious eyes at Watson, who sat down gingerly in his own chair. "You told me ... You saw trouble and came through it, came through to the other side. How did you do it? ... How did you come through to the other side?"

"With the help of some true friends. And more than a bit of luck."

"Friends. And luck ..." St Martin murmured to himself. "She told me. Do you know what she told me the morning after she threw herself from her bedroom window?" He stared into the middle distance, trying to pin down the memory. "She was tucked into her bed so that I couldn't see her damaged limbs. I was afraid to look at her because I could sense that her face, that beautiful dear face, was bandaged across one cheek. Her eyes were filled with tears, they brimmed with them but did not fall. 

"I tried to comfort her with my flimsy words and then she said, 'Everyone goes to such lengths to pretend that it matters. But what if it doesn't matter? The day before it happened. I was returning home from the Heath and a woman was walking in front of me. She was a big woman and she walked slowly and I saw a great cavity inside of her. It was hollow and there was nothing to fill it, or that could fill it. I said to myself, we go to so very much effort to carry an emptiness inside of us. Why do we do it?'”

Watson absorbed these words without comment. 

"Did your friends listen to you, Dr Watson?"

"Yes, they did." A tone of assurance, admitting of no doubt. Something in Holmes woke to the possibilities in it.

"Would you be willing to listen to me?"

"What do you have to say? It's all right, you know, whatever it is." 

"I killed Maxwell Thompson."

Holmes held himself still, alert to the moment.

"Yes, I killed him, with a great knife from the kitchen at his Dorset home. On the beach, in the cove below his house. We were walking together and he didn't expect it in the least. It was the work of a minute to thrust the point into the tender skin at his waist. One shout and he crumpled and it was over."

Before Watson could reply, St Martin continued. "You wouldn't have thought me capable of it. Is that what you're thinking? Of dragging the body of an old family friend up the beach. I wrapped his head with a muffler so that I shouldn't see his eyes, but it thudded against the sand with each tug of the body further from the shore.

His tone altered and he spoke as if he had come to a decision. "Yes. It began a long time ago. He always had me in his sights. But how does a child of eight know that something is terribly amiss? I used to bring him my stolen fruits so willingly, with such desire for his approbation.

"At first, it was small objects from the shops. Once a hat. I remember how I hastened home that afternoon, terrified lest anyone should see the shape of it beneath my coat. He laughed and asked why it had taken me so long to return with the prize."

"He?" Watson asked.

"You haven't guessed? Why, my father, of course," St Martin replied with eyes that were clear now. 

"Beginning when I was twelve—Emmeline was ten—he used to order me to his room, where he would—receive his lady companions." St Martin's face burned. "He made me sing for them, clad only in my undergarments. I protested, but he threatened to harm my sister if I didn't carry out his schemes to the letter. It was a bargain I had to make." 

"Harm your sister?"

"I feared that he would beat her. At least, that's what I fooled myself into believing." St Martin snorted with contempt. "Father must have been contemplating Maxwell Thompson's death for a long time. And when Emmeline—when she tried to take her own life, he saw his opportunity. She was sent to the Thompsons to be out of the way of gossip. Mrs Thompson always felt a great sense of responsibility for Emmie.

"I visited quickly, stayed not even a day. Just to ... carry out Father's command. But I had to tell someone afterwards. God, how I had to tell someone. I didn't know if I could confide in Emmie. She was so fragile, and could she keep a secret? Little did I know how well she could. I told her what I had done, and why. She hugged me close and began to shake all over, powerless to stop. And it was then ... God, oh God forgive me! I always knew but I never wanted to know. It was written upon her face, her figure. I see that now. Should I have demanded an answer of Father? Should I have demanded an answer of him?" St Martin pleaded. 

"What would your question have been?"

"She told me. She told me. He had inflicted the most unspeakable suffering on her, used her in the basest way, for years." St Martin broke down. "All my labours, all my appeasements, were for nothing. I clung to Emmie, but I can't recall what I said to her or how I left that house. Only the whisky got me through that day. And many days thereafter."

Watson rose and stood before St Martin, who sat hopelessly hunched in the chair. He put an arm around him, wrapping him in tweed and normality. "You were a company of one man. Against a foe who held the securest of positions. There was nothing else you could have done. We always ask ourselves afterwards if we lacked courage. If we could have done things differently. But that way lies madness." Holmes heard the snuffling of St Martin's tears and wondered how Watson could allow himself to be soiled with them. Holmes turned away, but could not block out the humiliating sound. Watson continued to comfort the man, and Holmes was struck by how broken Watson himself must be to say the words he had uttered. He could not stand there hiding in the dark. He must rouse himself and confront the matter. Send for Lestrade. Cross-examine John St Martin. Document and record. Place it all neatly in a new scrapbook. 

Holmes stepped out of the shadows and moved towards the sitting room, but paused when he caught a glimpse of St Martin's face. It was that of a man who was shattered beyond repair.

\--

"But how could a person disappear like that? Please explain it to me, Lestrade, for I have the greatest difficulty in understanding!" Holmes whirled about, turning on the Inspector, his dressing gown flaring around him.

"We've gone over every one of our procedures, interviewed all of our men, and can't find any loophole through which John St Martin might have escaped. The Commissioner is meeting with the Foreign Office about it later today, since we have reason to suspect that he may have fled abroad. Rest assured we shall find him," Lestrade said glumly, without much hope that this valiant assertion would in fact manifest as fact.

"Ha!" exclaimed Holmes, throwing up his hands. 

"At least Ronnie St Martin was absolved of the crime of killing Maxwell Thompson," Watson observed. "But some part of him must live in fear of his father's return. What's to become of him and his sister?"

"We've attached a police detail to the Hampstead house until we can locate the father. And I understand that their mother's family has stepped forward to assist." 

"Nevertheless, I don't imagine that it will be very easy for the two of them to find their way back."

"No, I don't imagine so," Lestrade agreed. "Well, I must be on my way to Scotland Yard. I'll be sure to alert you to any new information we find regarding St Martin's whereabouts. My thanks for your help with this case. To both of you." Lestrade nodded pointedly at Watson as he bid farewell. 

Holmes paced the room, his hands clasped together under his nose. Watson set to loosening his necktie. 

"What a grim tale. Have you ever had a similar investigation, Holmes?"

"Hmm? No, I can't say that I have." He had approached his chair and was about to sit down, when he turned suddenly to face Watson. "My congratulations," he said.

"Congratulations?"

"For breaking open the case."

"What? Oh, well. It was poor St Martin who was brave enough to lay the whole thing out. I really did nothing but attend to what he said."

Holmes gave Watson a quizzical smile. It was perhaps his fellow-lodger's most winning quality—his self-deprecation without a trace of false modesty. 

"The St Martins spoke to you, not because of any particular line of questioning you adopted, but because you allowed them to confide in you in a way that I've never managed to do." 

Watson seemed to travel as far away as Ronnie St Martin had done the day he had confessed to the killing of Maxwell Thompson. He began to speak in a halting manner. "There was a volunteer at the hospital in Peshawar. Mrs Ellison was her name. Her husband was the commanding officer of the cantonment. She would sit with me for hours, reading to me or knitting while I did nothing but lie there, recovering from the enteric fever. At last I began to talk to her and— She listened to me," Watson said. "One day I told her my tale of the Battle of Maiwand and everything that happened there. I couldn't bear to relate the full story to her face, so I wrote the rest of it out in a letter. She returned it to me when it came time for me to leave for England. She said it more properly belonged to me. I found that very letter in one of the trunks that arrived the morning that Lestrade brought us the Thompson case. It gave me a shock to come across it again like that. You don't know, Holmes. How flawed I was as a soldier and a doctor."

"Everybody is flawed," Holmes said promptly.

Watson went on, as if he could not hold back the words now. "Preston, the chief medical officer, perished early in the battle. It was left to me and the orderlies to care for the wounded who were delivered to the field hospital. They came in waves. Waves that never stopped. I was wounded late that afternoon, and became enraged that I should have so foolishly let myself stumble into the path of a Jezail bullet. I looked around me and saw two stretcher bearers. I screamed orders at them to carry a man who was already half dead to the operating tent. Screamed at them as a way in which to relieve my own pain. When I looked over at them again, a shell had landed in their midst and there were only pieces of flesh lying about where men had been before." Watson hung his head, bitterness in his voice. "We all have our confessions to make, it seems." 

Holmes desired nothing more than to scrabble his way out of the room. How was he to respond to such a disclosure? Despite his panic, he resolved to let the moment hover and come to rest, without rushing to draw it to a conclusion. The next step was somehow inevitable. He thrust out his hand. "We spoke of bargains not long ago. You remember. What do you say to a bargain of our own? You'll accompany me on my—our—future cases, providing any assistance required, and in exchange you're free to write them up however you like. Would that suit you?"

Watson, his face drawn, regarded Holmes for what was surely an eternity. Embarrassment was in his gaze but also relief and something else, which Holmes could not identify. "Yes," he agreed at last, shaking Holmes's hand. "That would suit me very well."

"You had better get on with it, then. Your story about the St Martins. I look forward to reading it. With the names changed to protect the innocent, of course." He flushed unaccountably as he settled himself in his armchair, while Watson went in search of tea. Mrs Hudson knew how to lay the best fires. This one crackled low and sure. He stretched out his long legs like a self-satisfied cat. Then he sobered. Here in this chair had sat Ronnie St Martin, slowly breaking apart as he confessed the darkest secrets that a family could hold. There in that chair had sat Watson, revealing the harrowing burden of his nightmares. It was a curious conflation. Holmes was standing and watching St Martin, and at the same time sitting and seeing the room from St Martin's vantage. He was sitting and listening to Watson, and at the same time seeing the dusty battlefield of Maiwand as his friend must have encountered it. It was as if a slight shift of angle allowed him to step back and forth between these states. As if he could feel the courageous hearts of the two men beating within his own frame.

Holmes shook his head to dispel the peculiar vision. He had the feeling that he had cast aside a self that no longer served him and was, improbably, on the threshold of a strange new world. How could his elation exist side by side with the pain he had lately witnessed? The answer escaped him. But for now, Watson was approaching him, asking him a question whose meaning did not really matter. Not when the eyes that formed it were filled with such a smile.


End file.
